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Hazel Kyrk, one of the first women economists at the Economic Department of the University of Chicago and author of A Theory of Consumption (1923), conducted groundbreaking research for the Bureau of Home Economics of the US Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Kyrk made a considerable contribution to the development of standards for a “decent living,” the Consumer Price Index, and the conceptualization of what would later turn into the definition of the poverty line. This chapter evaluates Kyrk’s use of eugenic notions of gender and race that were widely used in Kyrk’s day. This chapter shows that eugenic reasoning impacts Kyrk’s theoretical work only superficially but does structure her research on consumption standards through her focus on the white middle-class family as the unit of analysis for consumer behavior. This chapter also makes clear that the American Institutionalist approach to consumer behavior, rather than marginalized and side-tracked due to a lack of theoretical progress, was relegated to the margins of economics science together with the research of women economists into Home Economics departments and policy research at government institutions.

Hazel Kyrk’s contribution is the most advanced formulation of the economics of consumption as a social phenomenon, an approach to the analysis of consumption that, originated from Veblen’s theory, was developed in the US in the early 20th century. This approach was part of a wider stream of empirical analyses of consumption expenditure that had begun more than a century earlier.

Along with elements that can be traced back to the neoclassical tradition, in Keynes’ analysis of consumption, we find original elements. The dependence of consumption expenditure on the level of income, which is essential for asserting the principle of effective demand, can also be found in a long tradition of empirical studies. In qualifying this relationship, Keynes uses theoretical elements echoing key insights of the economics of consumption as a social phenomenon. There is no documentary evidence that Kyrk or the economics of the social relevance of consumption came to Keynes’ attention. It is possible, however, to develop reasonable speculative considerations to argue a link between Keynes’ elaboration and both the empirical literature on the determinants of consumption and the economics of consumption as a social phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to identify opportunities and challenges for small- to medium-sized pre-owned fashion enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam. While recent studies have identified the growth of pre-owned fashion in developed economies, pre-owned clothing remains negatively associated by some consumers with overseas charity donations of second-hand clothes to Vietnam, following the economic upheaval of the 1980s.

Qualitative data were collected via semi-structured in-depth interviews with founders and/or owners of pre-owned fashion SMEs (n = 5, aged 25–40 years) with physical stores located in Ho Chi Minh City alongside online retail platforms. All interviewees are significant industry and consumer influencers.

Younger Vietnamese consumers are motivated by (1) pre-owned fashion's value for money compared to buying new western branded luxury items and (2) the ability of pre-owned and vintage fashion to allow the wearer to create a unique personal style. While Vietnamese consumers and retailers associate “sustainable fashion” with various, often unrelated concepts, the impact of global and local discourse around sustainable fashion in the last five years has generally supported wider interest in pre-owned fashion.

This study contributes to the relatively modest pool of English-language research on the fashion and textiles industry in Vietnam, a global fast-fashion manufacturing hub. The findings advance understanding of how pre-owned fashion is growing as a high-end niche market despite significant supply chain restrictions as well as a lingering perception of pre-owned fashion as charitable donations.

The rise of the regulatory state during the Gilded Age was closely associated with the development of institutionalist ideas in American academia. In their analysis of the emergent regulatory environment, institutionalists like John Commons operated with a fundamentally marginalist theory of value and distribution. This engagement is a central explanation for the ultimate ascendancy of neoclassical economics, and the limitations of the regulatory environment that emerged in the Progressive Era. The eventual rise of the Chicago School and its deregulatory ambitions did constitute a rupture, but one achieved without rejecting preceding conceptions of competition and value. The substantial compatibility of the view of markets underlying both the regulatory and deregulatory periods is stressed, casting doubt about the transformative potential of the resurgent regulatory impulse in the New Gilded Age.

This paper presents an historical reconstruction of the radicalisation of Alan Fox, the industrial sociologist and a detailed analysis of his early historical and sociological writing in the classical pluralist phase.

An intellectual history, including detailed discussion of key Fox texts, supported by interviews with Fox and other Biographical sources.

Fox’s radicalisation was incomplete, as he carried over from his industrial relations (IR) pluralist mentors, Allan Flanders and Hugh Clegg, a suspicion of political Marxism, a sense of historical contingency and an awareness of the fragmented nature of industrial conflict.

Recent academic attention has centred on Fox’s later radical pluralism with its “structural” approach to the employment relationship. This paper revisits his early, neglected classical pluralist writing. It also illuminates his transition from institutional IR to a broader sociology of work, influenced by AH Halsey, John Goldthorpe and others and the complex nature of his radicalisation.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of destination marketing and media profiling to re-engage international tourists. However, potential crisis-induced nation brand (NB) deficits must be addressed to re-ignite tourism demand. The study examines the possible intervening effect of the contemporary NB in the international destination marketing and media-travel motives nexus.

A deductive quantitative study was undertaken with an online Amazon Mechanical Turk sample of n = 454 respondents. Hypotheses were tested using PROCESS Macro, Model 4.

The results show that the NB [people and negative events] had a practically significant partial mediating effect in the destination marketing – nature-cultural oriented travel motivation nexus.

New insights are provided via a practical model which facilitates the measurement of potential nuances in the influence of destination marketing and media profiling on leisure tourists' travel motives amid crises. The intervening effect implies that a better understanding of the NB as an indirect antecedent to travel motivation may result in more effective crisis communications and tourism recovery-oriented marketing.

The study is amongst the first to extend marketing and behavioural theory to explore the interplay between the marketing and media profile, a nation's brand and tourists' travel behaviour amid a crisis. The study addresses a discernible dearth of knowledge related to the influence of the NB on tourist behaviour from an emerging market perspective.